The Stratford Festival of Canada, North America’s largest summer theater, said Monday that it will not be producing its traditional summer season inside its four major theaters, but will instead create a new slate of about a dozen productions to be staged inside a pair of tents erected on the grounds of the festival and the new Tom Patterson Theatre.
The theater said the 2021 season, composed of titles yet to be announced and set to begin in late June, will be made up of “plays and cabarets.”
The modest plans are in reaction to current COVID-19 regulations within the Canadian province of Ontario that currently limit indoor audiences to 50 people, even in venues as large as the Stratford Festival, which has 1,800 seats. However, 100 people are permitted to gather outdoors or in tent-like structures.
Although Stratford is a big draw for theater-loving Americans, especially from cities like Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, the international border between the U.S. and Canada remains closed for leisure travel.
A festival spokesperson said that tourist-dependent Stratford was optimistic that might change at some point in the summer, and that the theater also did not yet want to rule out the possibility of offering indoor shows in the fall, or even into the winter.
However, it’s clear that the signature summer repertory season, which would normally be beginning rehearsal now, will be far from the usual.
For the second year in a row.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
